for all; and this being so, no one has any interest in making them burdensome to others." The
alienation is to be without reserve: "If individuals retained certain rights, as there would be no
common superior to decide between them and the public, each, being on one point his own judge,
would ask to be so on all; the state of nature would thus continue, and the association would
necessarily become inoperative or tyrannical."
This implies a complete abrogation of liberty and a complete rejection of the doctrine of the rights
of man. It is true that, in a later chapter, there is some softening of this theory. It is there said that,
although the social contract gives the body politic absolute power over all its members,
nevertheless human beings have natural rights as men. "The sovereign cannot impose upon its
subjects any fetters that are useless to the community, nor can it even wish to do so." But the
sovereign is the sole judge of what is useful or useless to the community. It is clear that only a
very feeble obstacle is thus opposed to collective tyranny.
It should be observed that the "sovereign" means, in Rousseau, not the monarch or the
government, but the community in its collective and legislative capacity.
The Social Contract Pan be stated in the following words: "Each of us puts his person and all his
power in common under the supreme direction of the general will, and, in our corporate capacity,
we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole." This act of association creates a
moral and collective body, which is called the "State" when passive, the "Sovereign" when active,
and a "Power" in relation to other bodies like itself.
The conception of the "general will," which appears in the above wording of the Contract, plays a
very important part in Rousseau's system. I shall have more to say about it shortly.
It is argued that the Sovereign need give no guarantees to its subjects, for, since it is formed of the
individuals who compose it, it can have no interest contrary to theirs. "The Sovereign, merely by
virtue of what it is, is always what it should be." This doctrine is misleading to the reader who
does not note Rousseau's somewhat peculiar use of terms. The Sovereign is not the government,
which, it is admitted, may be tyrannical; the Sovereign is a more or less metaphysical entity, not
fully embodied in any of the visible organs of the State. Its im-